Are You Annoying?

Computerworld - Do you tell IT insider jokes that users don't understand? Do you sprinkle technical jargon through discussions with business people? Do you find that you've usually got the right answer to any problem and you let everyone know it? If so, you may be something you didn't think you were: annoying.

Everyone's annoying some of the time, says Kimberly Alyn, a corporate trainer and co-author of Annoying People and Why You're One of Them (Llumina Press, 2003). But annoying behavior can have serious consequences in IT, where it can compromise your effectiveness, wreak havoc with projects and even derail your career.

Annoying behaviors are tricky because what annoys one person may sail by another. "You can say the same thing the same way to two people, and one person will say, 'Damn, that's annoying,' and the other person will not think anything of it," says Dan Bent, CIO at Benefit Systems Inc. in Indianapolis, an administrative services provider to health care plans.

But annoying behavior in IT sends ripples through the whole business. Gary Langer, associate vice president for academic technology at Chicago's Roosevelt University, explains that when IT support people are annoying, "people lose confidence, and they just give up. They stop asking questions."

Bent concurs. "You're always communicating with other people, and if you're annoying them, it reduces the likelihood your message will get across," he says.

Projects may also suffer. Jackie Palmer, a senior product manager at CRM software maker E.piphany Inc. in San Mateo, Calif., tells of participating at a meeting for a large insurance company that involved implementing process change. "The only way to do it is get [users] to buy in themselves," says Palmer. But a consultant at the meeting began to dictate what would happen. "The users became very combative," she recalls. It took several weeks of meetings to resolve the issues, and the project fell behind schedule.

If you think that you can't be annoying because you often work alone, think again. You still deal with people for support, advice and information, as well as to get a promotion, notes Gini Graham Scott, author of A Survival Guide for Working With Humans (Amacom, 2004).

For the worst offenders, the consequences of being annoying are potentially dire.

"Say someone comes to you and asks you a question today, and they find you annoying," says Bent. "Maybe the next time, they'll ask someone else. Soon people stop coming to you and asking you things, and you end up without a job."

The IT Niche

IT has its own annoying quirks. Langer says some IT people label users as neophytes and then blame them for any difficulties. "The user insists their e-mail doesn't work, and the IT person says, 'My e-mail works perfectly,' and assumes the user is the problem. Users really find this annoying," he says.